Musings on and analysis of cultural phenomena from a feminist and Marxist perspective

Friday, July 5, 2013

LGBT Pride, Gay Marriage, and the Reproduction of the Center

Pride is a magical time of year when progressive organizations unite to celebrate diversity and demand full equality for our LGBT brothers and sisters. I intended to make this post a carefree field report about the parade and festival including colorful pictures of topless gay guys and elegant drag queens, with a dash of commentary on the revolutionary potential of the LGBT community. I would have playfully mocked my Trotskyist comrades for hawking newspapers and my liberal feminist friends for their petitions.This year
promised to be an especially jubilant event due to the Supreme Court's rulings last week declaring DOMA unconstitutional and destabilizing California's Proposition 8. Finally,
gays and lesbians can get married! At least, the federal government
can't stop them, although Michigan and Virginia might try. But, alas, that was not meant to be. As Mercy for Animals was summoned by event staff to join the parade, a torrential downpour ensued. Anyone who has spent substantial time in Florida is aware that downpours of this kind typically last 10-20 minutes, then the relentless sun reclaims his throne and a rainbow or two emerges. This was not the case last Saturday. The gutters overflowed with glitter, feathers, and false eyelashes. Disgruntled drag queens must have been pouting into consolatory cocktails in bars all down Central Avenue. Even once we had distributed 2,000 anti-cruelty leaflets over the course of two hours while wading through ankle-deep puddles, even once the Wolfe and I were downtown at a vegetarian bistro, even once we relocated to the best build-your-own-Bloody-Mary bar in the Bay Area, even three bars into our hopping, the rain persisted. No pictures were taken; my camera (i.e. phone) spent the day in various more prepared folks' backpacks. So much for a lighthearted rundown of a glorious celebration of diversity. Back to standard ranting...Now for clarification. For those who don't know me personally, my activism functions on the hypothesis that progressive social advancements help make capitalism more tolerable until we overthrow it. I have fought for marriage equality alongside activists of all stripes despite suspicions that marriage is a fundamentally bourgeois institution that fortifies capitalist patriarchy. My instinct is to promote the abolition of marriage due to its misogynistic history and failure to subvert normative bourgeois family structures in favor of something similar to Utah's Common Ground Initiative, which is far more inclusive of radical types of kinship bonds, communities, and non-conjugal relationships. However, none of this has deterred me from participating in activism to support others who perceive marriage equality as the struggle of our time. Mainstream LGBT organizations' focus on marriage as a fundamental human right has paid off with the recent SCOTUS rulings, so who am I to begrudge so many individuals a legitimate reason to celebrate?* All power to those fighting for equality: you know how to reach me to participate in direct action and demonstrations. With that said, inclusion of LGBT couples in the institution of marriage does not weaken but strengthens it. Legalization of gay marriage at the federal level preserves cultural hegemony by strategically including an element that is widely perceived as radical. This strategic inclusion of marginal elements occurs throughout the superstructure, from token women in powerful government positions to the one black friend in sitcoms.** By periodically including ostensibly heterogeneous elements in the socially-accepted norm, the norm is stabilized. In "Explanation and Culture: Marginalia," (In Other Worlds,*** 1987)--a playful and incisive essay--Gayatri Spivak, drawing on Adrienne Rich, argues that to maintain its dominance the (white, bourgeois, heterosexual, male) center
strategically includes (of color, working class, LGBT,
female) marginalized cultural elements, stating "The putative
center welcomes selective inhabitants of the margin in order better to
exclude the margin" (145). She uses her own participation in an academic conference and her position in academia as examples. She is a woman of Indian descent, while her peers were white Anglo-Saxon men, the traditional demography of the academy. She challenges their "masculist centralism" in several spirited confrontations, which they condemn as "unfair." (Did I mention that this is a really fun read? What else is to be expected from a disciple of Derrida?)

Prior to this
SCOTUS ruling, LGBT civil unions were excluded from federal
benefits and protections, placing them squarely in the margins of the
bourgeois institution of marriage, notion of love, and nuclear family.
However, these relationships are not inherently radical or heterogeneous. This is not to say that LGBT couples are not
stigmatized or oppressed; they are. And homosexuality might be radical under certain historical conditions, but monogamous gay marriage mimics the bourgeois nuclear family. The sexual orientation of those in normative
relationships does not automatically radicalize those relationships or the individuals in them.Spivak claims that marginal elements allowed into the center must behave in an certain manner in order to be tolerated (149). LGBT
folks can only be tolerated if they behave in a specific way, in this
case by conforming to bourgeois notions of love and family, for which
marriage is the official cultural explanation. She notes, "The
strongest brand of centralization is to allow in only the terms that
would be consistent anyway" (155). Gay marriage functions similarly
enough to heterosexual marriage that is does not disrupt the "consistency loop" required to sustain and reproduce the center. The
center can "risk" embracing these previously marginal elements
because they pose no threat to its dominance. In fact, the center mustadmit certain marginal elements to sustain
and reproduce itself.She goes on to claim that the margin can
never be erased, only tamed to "exclude the possibility of the radically heterogenous" (143). By including the LGBT community in the institution of marriage, the "radically heterogeneous" elements--expressions of love and family that offer alternatives to marriage--are relegated to the margins and the center is stabilized, sustained, and reproduced.

While some see the federal recognition of gay marriage as a momentous leap forward for individual rights and equality, and they might be correct, it is (also?) a strategic move by capitalist patriarchy to exclude radical communities from official cultural explanations of love and family. Radical communities still exist--the margin is irreducible--but BDSM adherents, polygymous arrangements, unmarried partnerships, multi-generational households, single-parent families, intentional communities, and other alternate kinship models are excluded from and marginalized by current official cultural explanations,**** keeping the center firmly intact. Let us congratulate our comrades whose relationships are now recognized by the state but never uncritically accept such recognition and its implications. *Disclaimer: I reserve the right to criticize any and all bourgeois institutions at any time.** pp. 101-114*** The essay is on pages 139-160 in my edition. **** Spivak
notes that the lines between margin and center are ever changing and
constantly negotiated, so currently marginalized
elements might eventually be incorporated into
the center under different material conditions. Predicting the future does not seem helpful here, only recognition that the location of the
boundaries between center and margin are impermanent.